


sometimes b sides are the best songs

by ClementineKitten, overwhelmingly_awesome



Series: i'll come back to you [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (...mild), Angst, Frottage, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Out, Mild Smut, Post-Canon, Relationship Study, Requited Love, Self-Hatred, porn with feelings: light on the porn heavy on the feelings part 2 electric boogaloo, unbearably soft n yearning the entire time bc school started and the authors are Going Through It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:20:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27081832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineKitten/pseuds/ClementineKitten, https://archiveofourown.org/users/overwhelmingly_awesome/pseuds/overwhelmingly_awesome
Summary: It has been a week.It has been a week since Iwaizumi left, promising an answer that Oikawa isn't sure he wants to hear.If the answer never comes, he'll never be rejected....But what if it's not a rejection?(Iwaizumi returns to the scene of their mutual confession with his answer. They deal with the consequences of their emotions.)
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Series: i'll come back to you [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976464
Comments: 38
Kudos: 115
Collections: kagsivity's fic archive





	sometimes b sides are the best songs

**Author's Note:**

> again, @overwhemingly_awesome did the amazing dialogue, i did the prose  
> title is a lyric from melon and the coconut by glass animals (i's a double entendre, cuz this is the sequel, and it's from oikawa's perspective... hng)  
> (other contenders for titles were "for you i'd ruin myself a million little times" [illicit affairs / taylor swift], "i was in full bloom before i met you" [flip / glass animals], and "kiss me like nobody would when i was 15" [it follows / waterparks])  
> (or for the angst - some days you're the best thing in my life (sometimes when i look at you i see my wife), teeth / 5sos)  
> enjoy! please ignore any italics glitches i'm tired

Déjà vu washes over Oikawa.

He’s jolted out of his focus on the tablet in front of him, one fist resting under his chin, earbuds tucked in his ears. Three sharp raps on the door draw him from the recording he’s been watching, and he sets it off to the side, getting up off the couch. He schleps to the genkan, peers out the peephole, and freezes.

Here arrives the arbiter of his morality.

His hand comes up to lie on the doorknob, cool metal beneath his palm, and he contemplates opening it at all.

Ha.

Like there’s any other choice.

The door creaks open by his own volition, and there he stands, a vision against the grey sky. The edges of his white jacket blur with the dreary mood, and the spikes of his hair disappear into wisps that float into the stark white clouds. Like he’s not quite there. Ethereal. Impermanent. 

“Hey.”

Oikawa arches an eyebrow.; he almost wants to laugh at the insouciance. Iwaizumi shifts his feet, eyes flickering anywhere but Oikawa’s face.

" _Hey?_ "

“I mean.” Iwaizumi’s hands are hidden in his pockets. He has them shoved there, almost as if he’s attempting to compact himself. “There are worse things that I could have opened with.”

His gaze meets Oikawa’s. His face is so clearly on guard, and Oikawa’s insulted that the man in front of him thinks that _he,_ of _all people_ , wouldn’t notice his apprehension. Even the milquetoast look that sits in those hazel depths is out of character.

“Fair,” he replies airily.

Neither of them move again. They’re like statues, having a go at acting human. If anything, that’s how Oikawa feels in that moment. The chill of the outside air finds them both, but instead of shivering, he merely feels it pass over his skin; he is stone, untouchable, eroded only by the changing weather, and the waning of time.

A week. It’s been a _week._

The rain batters on his concrete a little harder, as Iwaizumi dithers, and his eyes see nothing.

“Can I come in?” Iwaizumi asks. It’s too soft to have come out of his mouth.

“I don’t know.” Maybe he deserves it, maybe he doesn’t, being played with a little like this. After all, he’s no stranger to doing the playing himself. Oikawa leans. “I kind of like watching you stand here in the cold.”

Iwaizumi blinks. The annoyance, there -- that’s well-worn territory. “You’d have to stand here, too.”

“This is my house, Iwaizumi.” The epithet settles; Oikawa watches the recognition dawn. “I could go grab a sweater.” If he could feel anything, that is. “You, on the other hand--”

“Let me in.”

Oikawa smirks at his growing dismay. Baggage aside, marks and touches that haunt his skin like ghosts aside, Iwaizumi has always been fun to mess around with. It was fun when they were seven, and it’s fun now. “No.”

“Oikawa.” Iwaizumi takes a step closer to him.

He sniffs. “Nope.”

Iwaizumi takes one hand out of his pocket and rests it on the doorframe, dangerously close to where Oikawa’s face is. He almost flinches. “Please.”

_Please._

The seconds drag. _One point, Iwa-chan. Don’t make a habit of it._

“Yeah, okay.” The world breathes a sigh of relief for the two lost shepherds as Oikawa holds the door open, spinning around as to not see the reaction. Iwaizumi steps in after him, the sound of the door shutting putting his heart into his throat. He watches Iwaizumi remove his shoes. “You know, I don’t think I’ve heard you say _please_ in your entire life.”

Iwaizumi carefully positions his shoes neatly. “I’m polite,” he objects, “just not to you.”

 _Ain’t that the truth?_ Oikawa leads him to his living room, a place which, despite no longer teeming with enough of the scent of alcohol to choke a man, is all the same wrought with the memory of sin. He had simply invited a spectre of the past into his reconstruction, one which follows him presently. “I should have recorded it. Set it as your text alert.” 

The game he had been watching plays on the tablet. He thought he had paused it.

“That would certainly draw attention.” Iwaizumi pauses in the middle of the room, looking uncertain with his arms awkwardly at his sides. Oikawa almost snorts, wondering if seeing his house in normal daylight, and not under the veil of late-night seduction, is boggling the mind.

“When have _I_ ever shied away from attention?” Oikawa asks, batting his eyelashes dramatically. He settles into one corner of the couch, propping his elbow up on the arm, looking up at Iwaizumi expectantly. He still appears frantic, like a skittish little chipmunk, attention going from Oikawa to the couch to the room at large. Oikawa wonders, distantly, how Iwaizumi would do in the business of sleeping around. He’s not very good at making casual conversation with people he’s gotten down and dirty with.

Of course, not that that’s an issue Iwaizumi would ever have to tackle.

He’s not like Oikawa, after all.

“That’s… fair.”

He shuffles.

Oikawa indicates the spot next to him on the couch with a casual twirling motion of his hand. Still looking out of place, Iwaizumi stiffly sits down, at the opposite end. They’re both cornered by the plush. Iwaizumi’s hands grip at his knees -- the denim there is worn, Oikawa notices. His fingers flex without purpose, nails scratching along the seams near inaudibly, and he stares, pointedly, straight ahead.

Somewhere, the walls creak as the thermostat rises.

A wind whistles against his window.

“You know,” Oikawa starts, piercing the stagnant atmosphere, “I didn’t expect you to come so soon.”

“Soon?” Iwaizumi says, surprised. “It’s been a week.”

 _An incredibly long week at that._ But it’s not like he’s going to say that one out loud. Not going to open himself up first, rip the heart out of his chest and let it bleed over Iwaizumi’s fingers. He promised whatever decision his best friend made, he would respect it. He wasn’t going to show his crimson-soaked hand at this point.

“A week isn’t very long in the grand scheme of things.” Instead, he lies through his teeth. He smiles lazily. “How long did it take you to decide what university you wanted to go to?”

Iwaizumi draws a circle with his ring finger.

There’s nothing on it.

_There’s nothing on it._

“Should I have waited longer?”

The moisture in the room escapes through whatever it can, because suddenly, Oikawa is in the desert. Parched, mouth dry, vision dizzied in the blazing heat, he becomes, once again, still. _This can’t hurt me. Nothing can._ He opens his mouth, but his lips form around no words.

He tries again.

“God, no.”

That’s what he can come up with, too dehydrated to say anything but the absolute truth.

If Iwaizumi notices how his eyes are drawn to his bare promise, he says nothing. But it’s clear to Oikawa that he does, because his gaze is careful. Watchful. Drinking in.

But he says nothing.

“Did you make a decision, then?” Oikawa asks, finding his voice. The ring. Or the lack thereof. He’s sick of getting his hopes up with this man, but even so, something childlike rises within him; perhaps it’s more apt to say something blooms. Something unfurls, a stem, leaves, and petals -- a flower, so perturbingly beautiful, but so delicate. 

That’s what Iwaizumi brings to him -- so much beauty, as fleeting and fragile as it is.

Arid conditions work not for the foliage.

“Or is this something else?”

Iwaizumi holds his gaze. Then, he turns, digging something out of his pockets. “I brought you something,” he begins.

Oikawa wills himself not to tremble. He’s _Oikawa Tooru,_ for crying out loud, he’s a professional athlete and a damn good one at that. He conducts the symphony of the court, he’s the one standing at the helm, he’s the one who keeps his cool, for the sake of the team he holds dear.

Why is that man undoing?

(Or rather, unfurling?)

“That’s _not_ an answer,” he responds.

Iwaizumi narrows his liquid eyes. “Do you not want it?”

Conductor of the symphony notwithstanding, he’s filled with pride and contrarianism to his toes -- it’s how he got this far. “Of course I want it,” he pouts.

From a pocket, Iwaizumi withdraws a small, white box, the same shade as his jacket. It’s wrapped in a black ribbon. Not nicely, mind you, it looks a little haggard. In a way, it’s almost endearing. Then, after some deliberation, he holds it out with one hand to Oikawa, who regards it the way one would roadkill. 

“What is it?”

“You have to open it, that’s how gifts work.” Iwaizumi shakes his hand a little, trying to get him to take it. Oikawa screws up his face. “You open it, then you see what’s inside.”

For a person who wouldn’t know a joke if it smacked him in the face, Iwaizumi has the dry comedy routine down pat. Dry, dry, dry. “Fuck you,” Oikawa says, fighting the slightest lilt of amusement from his words. “What’s inside it?”

" _Open it._ "

The tone makes Oikawa lift his hands and gingerly takes the box from Iwaizumi, who crosses his arms once he’s free of the gift. “I’m afraid something’s going to jump out at me,” he admits.

What, perchance? Rejection? The fraying relationship with the boy, the man, the _friend_ he’s known all his life? His own flaws? Or all three of them at once?

Iwaizumi glares at him. “You seriously think I got you a prank gift?”

Again, no comedic bone in his body. “I think you considered it.”

His chest heaves with a sigh. “I didn’t get you a prank gift. Open it.”

Oikawa stares into the loose bow on the ribbon. He never was good with these arts and crafts things, huh? He could slam down a spike that could make you regret being born, but give him some precision work, and he falls apart. Makes sense that Oikawa was the more artistically inclined out of the two, while Iwaizumi easily got bored with glue and construction paper and just wanted to adventure outside.

(Which, of course, Oikawa was never adverse to.)

“No.”

Iwaizumi blanches. “Seriously?”

Oikawa grins ruefully. “Yeah, no.” Iwaizumi’s eyes almost seem to glaze over. “I don’t know what to expect. I don’t like going into things with no expectations.” 

The clip he had been watching has stopped. He no longer notices the flicker of light changing as players do from the screen. “Help me understand what I might find in this box.”

Iwaizumi huffs. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it back.” He leans forward with the intent to take it, but Oikawa holds it above his head. _You’ll have to reach over me to get that one, Iwaizumi._

“No, that’s not the deal.” Iwaizumi’s mutinous expression is up close, now. His nose is all wrinkled up. He looks cute. “Tell me something that'll give me a good enough reason to open this box,” Oikawa stipulates.

Rocking back to an upright position, Iwaizumi frowns at him. “Why are you being so stubborn?” he asks, honestly -- or, as honest as he can seem.

Oikawa lowers his arms. “I don’t want my rejection to come in the form of a poorly wrapped candy box.” He flails with the end of the ribbon, which is teased by scissors.

Iwaizumi searches him, hands back on his knees. Wow, he really doesn’t know what to do with those things, huh? Oikawa makes a point of not shying away from his scrupulous expression. _Like he’s undressing me in his mind,_ he thinks privately. The thought elicits a bit of humour in his own distressed brain.

“You’re expecting a rejection, then?”

The ring. _The ring._

(...Or, the lack thereof.)

“I’m not an idiot,” Oikawa spits. “You left. If you’d wanted to stay, you would have.”

“You told me to leave,” Iwaizumi points out.

“I was _drunk._ ”

“I made the right choice.” If his words weren’t final enough, the way he says them sure is. “I made the choice to leave, and I’ve made my decision.”

Oikawa’s heat is on, and for all intents and purposes, the house is warm enough to be comfortable, at the very least. Even so, a shudder runs down his spine, all the same. How is it so cold in the dunes, all of a sudden?

“But you have to open the goddamn box to find out what it is,” Iwaizumi finishes in his typical exasperation.

Oikawa feels as if he’s Atlas.

“You could just tell me, instead of making me do all of the work,” he points out, not harshly but not kindly, either. “You're basically making me reject myself. That's not very nice of you.”

Hurt reflects in Iwaizumi’s countenance. Oikawa’s heart squeezes, chest growing tighter than it had already been. Ah, what his friend did to him, knowingly or not.

_Love ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, eh?_

“Do you really think I’m that big of an asshole?”

Oikawa smirks bemusedly. “Yes.”

“I’m not,” Iwaizumi sighs.

_Well, cruelty isn’t, either._

“I don’t believe you,” taunts Oikawa, box a hefty weight.

For a moment, he feels as if he’s across from Iwaizumi, one week ago, watched by the whiskey bottle and judged by the 2AM sky. He has that same, serious twist to his face, from across the couch, in the midst of some internal battle Oikawa knows nothing of. Oikawa bites his tongue inside his mouth.

“Okay,” Iwaizumi acquiesces. He crosses and uncrosses his legs -- getting comfortable, perhaps. “So, inside the box, there are two potential outcomes.”

The motherfucker has the audacity to _Schrödinger_ him-- if Schrödinger is even a verb.

“What are you doing?” Oikawa inquires, skeptical. Rarely does Iwaizumi kowtow.

“You said you wanted expectations,” Iwaizumi retorts flatly. “I’m telling you what to expect.”

Oikawa pulls up his knees, so that he can press his back to the arm of the couch and look at Iwaizumi directly. He holds the box in his lap. “Okay.”

“What, in your messed up head, do you think those two options could be?”

_That was unnecessary, Iwa-chan._

He’s too tired to correct his thoughts.

“I don’t know.” Oikawa thumbs over the box -- it’s smooth, shiny, vaguely plasticy. One of the ones you could pick up at a dollar store. “I’ve never been rejected in the form of a gift before.”

He’s more frequently thrown out of beds, in fact.

" _What are the two options?_ " Iwaizumi demands, impatient. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Either I’ve chosen to stay with her and this is some consolation, rejection gift, or, I’ve dumped her and this is my way of, I don’t know, telling you?” He _tsks._

The longer Oikawa has the box in hand, the darker it becomes. The more time passes, the more likely it becomes that radioactive substance decays, and the vial trips.

“Telling me what?”

Iwaizumi groans. " _Open the fucking box._ "

Oikawa tilts it in his hands. He looks at Iwaizumi over the lid. “I admire your creativity.”

“You’re being cruel, Tooru. Open the box.”

Oo, _Tooru._ He’s playing his ace up the sleeve, too. Oikawa knows, in the forefront of his mind, that Iwaizumi is simply attempting to rile him up. He _knows_ that, but at the same time, the name rips through him like a bolt of electricity, lightning that tears him apart and cauterizes him all at once. It’s like nothing even happened to him, when everything did.

“Have you ever seen _Seven?_ With Brad Pitt?” Some of the guys in the Argentinian league were big fans of Western action flicks, but many were a little too gory for Oikawa’s tastes.

“I hate you.” Someone doesn’t appreciate the work of Brad Pitt, apparently.

" _What’s in the box?!_ " he yells in egregious English. “That’s what you sound like.” Iwaizumi, appearing fed-up, taps on his knee.

His irritation is clear in his expression -- Oikawa desperately wishes he knew why Iwaizumi didn’t just get up and leave him right then. Leave the couch, leave the house, leave behind a life he could have led alongside Oikawa, one which he could never agree to play a part in.

 _Why are you letting me string you along? Why are you staying with me?_ He poses these questions to the void of his mind, and receives no answer. At least, none which would satisfy him.

 _Leave me be_ and _please don’t_ play on repeat in his mind, a record that turns endlessly. One is the A Side, and the other, the B; he cannot decipher which skipping track is which.

“Why are you so scared to open it?” Iwaizumi asks him quietly.

Oikawa looks down.

“If I don’t open the box, I can’t be rejected.”

The cat doesn’t die if he doesn’t open the box. The thought experiment goes on forever and ever, until the Earth stops turning, trapped in potential purgatory. There’s no disappointment, but at the same time, there’s nothing to be gained. He gets to live in blissful ignorance, clinging to some false ideal.

What’s there to hope for?

He won’t be hurt, but he can’t continue forward, either.

Iwaizumi rests his head on the back of the couch, cheek to the suede. It’s a less poetic scene, than it would have been in the middle of the night, but in the daylight, as muted and grey as it may be, he’s still gorgeous as ever. “You’re an idiot,” he murmurs.

“Insult to injury?” Oikawa waves the box flippantly. “Or insult to insult, I guess.”

“Why would I reject you in the form of a gift?” Iwaizumi questions. He looks nice, there, arms crossed (he’s gone back to that position, now, and it appears that’s where he’s chosen to stay), looking half-asleep (though it’s really annoyance that has lidded his eyes), staring at Oikawa. A facsimile of domesticity.

Why would he? To let him down easy? To keep the words out of his mouth? Neither of those options seem like Iwaizumi’s style. An impossible man, a man whom Oikawa has the pleasure of feeling too much for, all at once, but one who is far from pussyfooting around the issue. So what the _Hell,_ pray tell, is in the box that he has been given?

How else can Iwaizumi fuck with his head?

“Because you’re secretly a sociopath,” he mumbles.

“I’m not a sociopath.”

Oikawa levels his gaze. “Only sociopaths get their dick this close to being in someone, before remembering they're engaged, leaving and not texting them for a week.”

Wrapped up so nicely, unlike the gift in his hands, that sentence was. It was a complete and utter disservice to everything Oikawa had been put through, during, and since that night. Endless agony, staring at the wall, waiting for phone calls or knocks that never came.

He didn’t lie in bed and mope; he’s a professional, after all. Sad excuse for a love life or not, there was a sport to be played. Doesn’t mean the pain didn’t linger.

It’s the reason he’s so hesitant to open this box now. It’s going to be yet another pointless endeavor, another call, knock, promise, not served to fruition. A disappointing end to their arc together, with no proper conclusion, that falls off right when it was needed most.

Iwaizumi rejects him, goes home, gets married. Then all that’s left is the aftermath.

“Yeah. That wasn’t…” Iwaizumi’s lips flatten, searching for a way to end his thought. “Great.”

_Good one, Iwa-chan! Full points._

He edges a little closer, speaks a little lower. “But I’m here now.”

Oikawa almost forgets to breathe.

Again, Iwaizumi whispers. “Why would I reject you in the form of a gift?” He hunches over, head in his shoulders, pleading.

“I don’t know.”

There’s the rub, huh? Iwaizumi has already purchased so much real estate in his mind, houses and houses that he has no intentions of moving into. Before Oikawa sits an accomplished man, one with a career, a life, a _home_ outside of him.

What use is there in getting hopes up? The only thing _he’ll_ find purchase in his disappointment. Raw, unfettered disappointment. 

He’s been through enough, here.

Oikawa purses his lips. “Does that mean it’s not a rejection?”

“Open. The. Box.”

Well, curiosity killed the cat.

Oikawa digs a nail into what has to be a quadruple knot. _Isn’t Eri a teacher?_ he thinks to himself, annoyed. _Surely she has experience in arts and crafts._ He tugs at it, pulls at the many ribbon ends, alas, to no avail. 

He sucks in his cheeks. “It’s stuck.”

Incredulity flashes on Iwaizumi. “What do you mean, it’s _stuck?_ ”

“I mean that it won’t open.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

In spite of himself, in spite of Iwaizumi, in spite of everything, a laugh peels from Oikawa’s lips. He fumbles with the ribbon. “It won’t _open,_ ” he giggles carelessly.

God, what are they _doing?_

Iwaizumi reaches out toward him. “Here,” he demands, holding his hand out for the box. Oikawa dutifully deposits it into his palm, and watches him struggle with the ribbon he himself tied.

“What’s the point of giving me a gift if you’re just going to open it?” Oikawa asks as his laughter peters off, smile touching his eyes. Iwaizumi lets out a grunt of frustration as he messes with the box. “Do you want a pair of scissors?”

His answer comes with Iwaizumi using his teeth to tear the ribbon off. Oikawa is impressed.

“Nice,” he compliments. Iwaizumi returns the box to him. “What is it?”

“Look at it.”

Oikawa braces himself, chest aflutter with fear and wonder. Steeled, he peers into the white box, and within it, he finds a folded piece of pink paper. A card. It’s set such a way that he’s looking at the back of it. 

“It’s a card,” Iwaizumi explains.

“I can see that.”

“Pick it up and _read it._ ” Iwaizumi glowers at him, like he’s teaching the process to a petulant child who refuses to listen to directions. Honestly, Oikawa isn’t better off than one at this point. Tentatively, he withdraws the card. He flips it over. There’s nothing written on the front, but there’s a drawing of a cartoon heart in the middle.

Suddenly, he feels sick.

“You could have put this in an envelope,” Oikawa comments.

“Would you have opened it if I had handed you an envelope?” 

He’s got him there. How did they come to this? “I probably would have called you a coward for writing down your feelings and not telling me.”

“Exactly. Besides…” Iwaizumi’s expression twitches nervously. “I didn’t write this one.”

Hot air. Beating sun. There’s fire in his lungs when he breathes in. “Your gift to me is a letter you didn’t even write?”

Iwaizumi blinks slowly. “Read it.”

Oikawa’s fingers aren’t trembling. That isn’t what’s happening. “Fine.”

He cracks it open, and everything comes flooding back. The dam bursts.

The water flushes his body ice-cold, and the whiplash in temperature makes his stomach roil with his building nausea. He’s choking, he’s _drowning,_ when did this rain start? It’s not supposed to rain in the desert, but all the same, he can barely keep his head above the water. His eyes and nose burn, and his clothes slick to his side, making him shake far too uncontrollably.

He’s seen this letter before. Obviously, he has. Iwaizumi knows he has.

It’s been over a decade, longer, even, but there’s no way he’d forget this.

_Is this how you get your sick kicks, Iwa-chan?_

He can’t even take a drink. It’s saltwater that thrashes against him. “Where did you find this?” he demands. It appears the letter had the desired effect, because Iwaizumi’s lips quirk up.

“I visited your sister.”

“My _sister?_ "

“Yeah.”

Oikawa manages to drag his eyes from the letter. It’s not very long, but the more he looks at it, the higher the water level rises. Childish scrawl fills the page, mostly Hiragana written in some washable marker, and the occasional Kanji to make the point. The paper is dented in some places, and those creases only deepen as Oikawa’s grip on it tightens. " _Why_ _?_ " he murmurs.

Iwaizumi straightens, sighs, and looks up at the ceiling. " _Dear Iwa-chan, I love you._ "

He’s _reciting the damn thing._ Oikawa cringes. _Really,_ aishiteru? _Did I really write that? Too clingy._ “Stop it,” he says.

" _I love your hair._ "

“This is cruel,” Oikawa pleads.

" _I love the way you catch frogs._ "

Oikawa traces the words as he says them. How nice of his younger self, to add a little doodle of a frog beside the period. " _Catch frogs?_ " he echoes.

“I was good at it. You know I was.” 

Their eyes meet. Oikawa can’t bear it.

In a heartbeat, they’re back in the stretch of woods behind Oikawa’s house, crouched by the pond, ears and eyes piqued for the sound of croaks, the leaps of those little green and brown suckers. Summer air wreathes around the both of them, and cicadas chirp in the background of their childish laughter.

There’s nothing but them and the endless blue sky. No stress. No girls. Nothing to fuck up.

Oikawa feels so vividly the squish of the damp grass between his toes as he leans in close to Iwaizumi’s clamped hands. He looks so proud of himself, surely stoic, with a bandage on his forehead from scraping himself on a low hanging branch the day prior. Then, slowly, he opens his hand -- the grand unrevealing. The frog leaps out of his palms and hits Oikawa in the chest. When it falls to the ground, it hops off into the bushes, never to be seen again.

Holding his chest, he lets out a scream, but it quickly turns to laughter. The two collapse into the marshy ground together -- Iwaizumi’s bug cage and net clatter as they do. He’s yelling at Oikawa for not grabbing the frog when he had the chance, but it, too, soon gives way to giggles.

They had always been chasing after each other, hadn’t they? Nothing could beat them when they were together.

No point in reaching out to that which they can’t return to, even if Oikawa still feels the same as he did back then.

" _I love the way you smile,_ " Iwaizumi still continues on, " _even though I only see it when you think I’m not looking._ _You’re an idiot for thinking not smiling thinks you look tough._ "

His mouth has flattened, now. “You are,” Oikawa says softly. “Stop it.”

" _I know you don't love me, but I love you. That's why I'm writing this. Maybe one day I'll be brave enough to tell you to your face. Love, Tooru._ "

He memorized it, the son of a bitch. There are hearts around the word Tooru. God, was Oikawa really that embarrassing, or has he simply always had a flair for the dramatic, and the cringeworthy?

The water sloshes. 

What the Hell is this? What reason does he have to twist the knife in his gut a little harder? This was supposed to be a rejection, not a reach deep into the depths of his memories, when he was a kid without a name or any shame to attach to the flower (the big one, one that could grow without water and sunlight, one he was sure could never die) that grew from his heart.

“What the fuck?” Oikawa can barely hear his own voice over the flood.

Iwaizumi inhales. He reaches out to Oikawa, the hands that pull the letter so hard he could rip it if he wanted to. Warmth closes over him. He can’t _breathe._

“Your sister said she found it when she was cleaning out your old room, after your parents moved.”

The card falls from his hands.

“And she just gave it to you?”

 _Chinami-nee-san_ is getting a strongly worded text message at some point in the near future. In the single moment there’s no water in his throat, it catches, anyway.

Iwaizumi works his fingers into Oikawa’s -- he doesn’t want to let him. He shouldn’t let him. He isn’t going to let him. 

He does.

His knuckles are roughened by the chill outside; he really needs to learn to wear gloves. He runs his thumb along the side of Oikawa’s index finger, and Oikawa can feel every whorl of his thumbprint against the skin, there.

“You’ve loved me since we were kids,” he murmurs simply. Oikawa pays attention to the motion of his thumb, and not much else.

“I told you that,” he responds numbly.

“I should have noticed.”

_Pull me out of the flood, please._

“I _was_ pretty obvious.”

_I’m going to drown._

Iwaizumi lifts both their hands, and pulls them toward his chest. He shifts, cupping Oikawa’s hands instead, holding them against his jacket. The warmth of his body seeps through Oikawa’s fingertips, static electricity that nips through his veins. His breath, his heartbeat, it all thrums through Oikawa’s hand, up his arm, and resonates, deep in his soul.

“I should have noticed my own feelings,” he appends.

 _Please, Iwaizumi._ He’s got his hand in his love’s, but neither of them are moving. The waves beat at Oikawa’s sides, threatening to wash him away into oblivion, and Iwaizumi stares down at him from atop the gopher wood. He decides whether Oikawa sinks or swims, in this moment.

Whether he’s collateral damage. Whether all that’s left for him is to take up time.

“You love me.”

A simple declaration falls from Iwaizumi’s lips. Simple, right; as if any part of this could _possibly_ be simple.

It’s up to Iwaizumi to either pull him up or toss him into the black sea. Hanging here, from his hand, only builds hope inside Oikawa. That hope fills his lungs with cotton and rubbing alcohol and fills his mouth with bile. He doesn’t want to have it, this unpleasant, stinging, crushing sensation that pulls him apart and puts him back together.

He doesn’t want to have it. _He doesn’t._

But the gentle way Iwaizumi holds him makes it build.

“I do.”

Some honesty could do the both of them good.

“I love you back.”

There is no fanfare, no fireworks, no screams in celebration. Their hands move up; Oikawa’s fingers form around the dips in Iwaizumi’s collarbone. The skin there, covered not by jacket nor t-shirt, is warm, supple.

The words coming out of his mouth don’t make any sense. Why, he wants to scream, why _would you?_ Why would you when you’re about to get married? When I’ve spent my whole life thinking you’re unattainable? When you have been, for fuck’s sake?

When does the other shoe drop? When does the complication kick in? Why is he choosing Oikawa?

_Why are you saying this like it’s easy?_

“Please,” Oikawa whispers. Iwaizumi looks him straight in the eye.

“Please what?”

_Maybe drowning won’t be as bad as they make it out to be._

“I don’t know.” Oikawa is tired. Tired of doubting himself and others. Tired of hating this ugly part of him, because there’s nothing else he’s allowed to hate. Tired of thinking Iwaizumi could ever want a messy, right fuck-up.

He wants him. He desires him _so_ strongly, it makes him feel ill. He wants him to pull him out of the water and onto the dry ground, to hold him and take him and have him, maybe not in sickness and in health, but in insecurity and lonely nights, until both of those are but a faint glimmer in the past.

But at the same time, how could he…

“Please tell me this isn’t a rejection.”

Iwaizumi, again, scooches closer on the couch. “It’s not a rejection.”

The water thrashes around him as he’s lifted up, out from that which seeks to destroy him. The currents, slicing like broken glass, attempt to rip at his clothes, but Iwaizumi pulls him out too quickly for that to happen. “Are you sure?” Oikawa asks meekly. 

“I’m sure.”

And up onto the Ark Oikawa is dragged. He sputters, spitting the water and alcohol and cotton from his lungs, heaving labourious, ragged breaths while they set sail for a new world. A new world, after this one has been battered and broken and destroyed.

“Oh,” Oikawa exhales. 

(With it comes the water, and the alcohol, and the cotton.)

“Oh?”

He feels suddenly very, very weak. Like he may collapse had be not been sitting on the couch, and like he may collapse either way. Out of the frigid depths, he goes completely hot, and the anxiety teeming within him festers, spreading to every atom of his body.

 _Vasovagal syncope._ He recalls the term distantly. _Well, I’m already pathetic enough at this point, what more can passing out do for me?_

“I feel nauseated,” he says faintly.

Iwaizumi clenches his hands, holding them flat against his sternum. His heartbeat is rapid. “In a good way?”

Oikawa gives him a watery, shaking smile. “Yes?”

“You don’t sound sure,” Iwaizumi murmurs. His jaw his tight.

How could he?

Time turns back again, not to sweet summer memories of playing in the bog or hunting for beetles (Iwaizumi liked to act like he was better at it, but Oikawa had the softer footfalls), but to quiet nights, both of them fully exhausted after a day of spelunking, in sleeping bags on the floor of the living room. Sleep always took Iwaizumi sooner, and Oikawa lied on his pillow, sometimes, just to watch him breathe. Imagine a future for just the two of them, as knights or crusaders or star athletes, but no matter what they were, they stood together, atop the new world.

A pure innocence, he had, being in love with his best friend before he even knew what that entailed.

When all he knew was that he loved the way he caught frogs.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

Closer, still, Iwaizumi comes. Their faces are mere inches apart. Brown against brown. Auburn against hazel. His eyes glitter, and Oikawa is looked through. “I love you.”

This wasn’t how the knight was supposed to rescue the prince.

“You do?” He can almost taste Iwaizumi’s breath.

“I do. I love you.” Iwaizumi lets go of their hands, and instead, brings one of his to hold the side of Oikawa’s face. It’s so _gentle._ The crook of his index finger settles where his jaw bends. “I love your hair. I love the way you catch frogs.”

This can’t be happening. “Iwaizumi--”

“I love the way you smile when you get all determined. I love the way you walk when you're happy. I love the way you stay up until one in the morning watching volleyball replays until you can't keep your eyes open anymore.”

The tablet has long since gone to sleep.

Iwaizumi stares into him, all of him, all of his flaws and insecurities, all of his mistakes and regrets, all of his love, all of his greatness. All he thinks of him. “I love being there with you, and watching the way your eyes get all droopy, and the way that you lean on my shoulder when you pretend you're not falling asleep.”

Oikawa isn’t going to cry. He’s too sober. “ _Hajime--_ ”

“I should have figured it out sooner.” Iwaizumi steamrolls on. “I should have been brave enough to tell you.”

Straight to his soul, the gaze goes. “I shouldn't have let you think I don't love you back."

It still has yet to completely sink in. Or rather, Oikawa is still resisting it. Resisting everything he’d ever wanted from this man. Goddamn, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. His face is _right there_ , he’s so _goddamn close._ So close that Oikawa can see he’s trembling, too.

Oikawa’s lip quivers.

“I love you so much.” This is so un-Iwaizumi like, so dream-like, that he’s kind of hoping Iwaizumi slaps him across the face to remind him he’s awake. His hand is so _gentle,_ why is his hand so gentle? “I want to be with you, I want to love you, and I want you to love me.”

And yet, and yet, and yet.

“What about Eri?”

The finger he once wore the ring on is not the one holding Oikawa’s face, but it’s not as if he has forgotten its lack of presence. He swallows air.

“She understands.”

 _What?_ “She does?”

Iwaizumi doesn’t look particularly comfortable with this turn of conversation, either. “Enough,” he says, as if that explains a single thing. “She knew I wasn’t happy.”

Four years. Four _years,_ Iwaizumi spent with Eri. Four years that Oikawa just shattered.

It doesn’t feel as good as he thought it would.

Unprecedented anger rips through him. He’s outraged, a white hot fury -- with Iwaizumi, for being so indecisive, with Eri, for being so goddamn _perfect and pleasant_ when it’s so within her right to despise both of them, with himself, for being the awful catalyst. With the world, for shoving them together like this. With the desert. With the flood. 

The ferocity pours into every cell. For a moment, he can’t even speak. He doesn’t even think to. Why is this all coming together? Why is Eri just agreeing? Oikawa had called her boring, but surely she’s no sycophant, some idiot, at Iwaizumi’s beck and call? Why isn’t she _mad?_

Suddenly, frighteningly, and nonconsensually, a memory comes to mind.

A memory of a child, not too much younger than he, with choppy black bangs and bright, _innocent_ blue eyes, looking up at him in awe and excitement, ball clutched in hands. A figment of his worst imagination, of everything he had done and will continue to do wrong.

Since when did Oikawa get to be happy without having to trample someone underfoot?

Why isn’t Eri miserable? 

Why isn’t she seething at her fiancé’s _dirty little secret?_

Why is it _him?_

“You were perfectly happy,” Oikawa tells Iwaizumi. “I shouldn’t have fucked it up, I shouldn’t have ruined it--”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Iwaizumi insists. He shifts his thumb to cover Oikawa’s mouth. “I’m _exactly_ where I’m supposed to be.”

Iwaizumi has him, caught. _What kind of shoujo-ass line was that, Iwa-chan?_ he thinks, panicked. He’s so close and his body his so warm and his breath smells like mint, what, did he just brush before he came over or something? The stimulation is all too much and the lights are all so bright, maybe they _should_ have done this at 2AM…

“You’re a big sap,” stammers Oikawa.

Iwaizumi cradles the side of his face. “Come on.”

“Really, you’re a ginormous sap.” He lets himself lean into the touch. “I thought _I_ was the drama queen, but that was incredibly dramatic--”

“You spent 20 minutes protesting about opening the box,” Iwaizumi points out. God, Oikawa can’t help but smile. He hates how much he loves Iwaizumi. “You're the most dramatic person anyone has ever met, ever.”

“Yes, but you love me.”

The flower inside him, his beauty, is plucked, petal by petal. _He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me--_

“I do.”

 _He loves me he loves me he loves me he loves me he loves me--_

Oikawa’s hand wanders. It starts out at Iwaizumi’s wrist, where he flexes his fingers around the muscle and bone, before it travels up to his hand, trailing over the skin on the back of it. He takes Iwaizumi’s fingers, wraps his gently around it, and moves it down to his chin.

Iwaizumi’s thumb finds his bottom lip.

“You _love me._ ”

He could ask a thousand times, hear the answer a million, and he would still struggle to take it in. Or even to believe it.

The knight always rescues the prince, huh? 

(Which is which, one can only wonder.)

" _I_ _do._ "

Despite what he promised to himself, tears eke out of the corners of Oikawa’s eyes. He’s too focused on how warm Iwaizumi’s hand is to feel ashamed. “Fuck,” he says quietly.

“Oikawa?” It’s at this point Oikawa realizes how quick his breathing has become. Noah has crushed his windpipe, he’s holding him so tightly to him. The storm rages around them, but they’re safe, here, together. Shivering, dripping with icy water, someone’s got his arm around him as the ship rocks back and forth, back and forth...

Easy breathing is a little overrated, isn’t it?

“Fuck!” Even with everything -- _everything_ \-- it rises, giddy, childish, _blooming,_ in him. He almost feels lighter. He clutches Iwaizumi’s wrist, clumsily and messily. “Are you serious?”

Iwaizumi smiles slightly. Fuck, Oikawa’s in love with him. “I’m serious.”

“You broke up with Eri?”

“I broke up with her. I want to be with you.”

Everything is so much. Oikawa has spent this week in purgatory, hiding away from the box, waiting to finally be rejected so that his anguish could be finally put to an end. Accept the hand he has been dealt, walk himself back to happiness, return to the one thing he can rely on -- volleyball.

His heart might beat out of his chest. He _hates_ being caught off-guard. And Iwaizumi _knows that_.

_Bastard._

“I think I’m going to pass out.” Vasovagal attack is back for a sequel -- where did Oikawa pick that term up, again?

Good Lord, Oikawa can _hear_ him smile. His lips split with a quiet smack. " _Dramatic,_ " he taunts.

“Kiss me.”

“What?”

Oikawa presses his forehead to Iwaizumi’s. Iwaizumi leans over him, knees between his legs, zipper of his jacket brushing against Oikawa’s t-shirt, breathing in tandem with him. “Please,” Oikawa murmurs softly. “Please kiss me.”

_Take away the storm._

“Whatever you want.”

Iwaizumi carefully meets his lips. It’s so starkly different from the last time they were on this couch, Oikawa knows, but for some reason, he can’t find it in himself to care. He angles his face with ease, and Oikawa explodes inside. 

His beauty blooms in face of the sun, the leaves unwind, the petals meet the glorious sky. What Iwaizumi gives to him completely unfurls in him, and he, himself, undoes in response. He locks his fingers around the back of his neck.

Iwaizumi goes slow -- they have all the time in the new world.

“You waited a week,” Oikawa breathes as he draws away.

Iwaizumi plants his hands on Oikawa’s shoulders. “I know”

He pulls Oikawa up onto his lap, leaning back. His mouth is so warm, just as warm as he had imagined, and it tastes a Hell of a lot better than when he was drunk out of his mind. “A _week,_ " Oikawa mumbles into it. He can’t exactly waste time on enunciation when Iwaizumi is right in front of him like this.

“I know,” Iwaizumi repeats. His tongue trails the curve of Oikawa’s bottom lip, and he shudders to his hairline.

Iwaizumi pulls him in a little further, hands wandering around his back, kissing him, soft and sweet and slow. Years upon years upon years of catching frogs, hunting bugs, playing volleyball, finding _each other,_ he puts into it, Oikawa thinks, because that’s what he reciprocates with. He kisses a memory, he kisses the present, he kisses love itself.

The clouds have parted.

(Both over the Ark, and from outside his window.)

“What if I’d died?” Oikawa asks.

“What if you-- what?”

That’s an expression Oikawa _really_ loves, a slight haziness to his countenance, blinking confusedly. He kisses it off. “What if I’d died before you could tell me?”

“I’m sorry?” _Adorable_ doesn’t seem like the most accurate way to describe Iwaizumi, but it’s all that shoots through Oikawa’s mind. _Adorably perplexed._

Oikawa leans forward, and forward, and even more forward, hands making their way to the side of Iwaizumi’s face. Apparently, he pushes a little too hard, because he and Iwaizumi rock backward, and Oikawa pulls away with a gasp for breath as the back of Iwaizumi’s head hits the arm of the chair, making them effectively horizontal. He presses himself up off of Iwaizumi’s chest. “What if I’d forgot?”

Iwaizumi kisses the tip of his nose -- he can’t really reach much else. “ _Forgot?_ ”

“I was _drunk!_ ” exclaims Oikawa. “I could have!”

He’s left feeling almost drunk again, actually. His tongue is inside Iwaizumi’s mouth, and he bites down on it, keeping their faces pressed to their lucid daydream. Their noses bump. “You weren’t… _that_ drunk,” Iwaizumi reasons tentatively.

Oikawa shifts. He kicks his feet in the air, palms held flush against Iwaizumi’s chest. The kissing is nice -- more than nice, really, the consolidation of what he’s yearned for for so _long,_ but just lying here, on top of the love of his life, is good, too. A pale fluster plays across his cheeks, colouring him a delicate pink that Oikawa could stare at for hours.

He kind of wants to stay here forever.

“Iwaizumi, the minute you left, I threw up for a solid half an hour then passed out on my bathroom floor. Sugawara had to carry me to bed.” Oikawa was pretty good at holding his liquor, if he did say so himself, but on occasion, it caught up with him -- though, if he has to posit a theory, it would be moreso the anxiety of the night’s events that led to him puking his guts out, over the whiskey.

He ought to take Sugawara out for dinner some time.

Iwaizumi’s face contorts with darkness.

He gently pulls Oikawa closer to him, fingertips folding around his jaw. His nails graze Oikawa’s ear lobes, and he rises and falls on Iwaizumi’s breathing chest. Their mouths lock and Oikawa lets him take the lead while he steals away all the apprehension and the fear and the pressure to be perfect right from him.

Their lips detach unhurriedly and lazily, and Iwaizumi rests his forehead against Oikawa’s. “I’m very glad you didn’t forget.”

Oikawa wonders how he managed to hold onto his better judgement and not fling himself onto Iwaizumi every time he was in flinging distance, when he speaks to him in that low register, words Oikawa feels reverberate through his entire body. He wants Iwaizumi to keep kissing him, but at the same time, he wouldn’t object to laying his head on his chest and listening to him _talk._

He’s going to melt. He’s going to cease to exist.

“Could you imagine?” He kisses the corner of Iwaizumi’s mouth, wiggling his hips.

“No.”

“You walk up to the door--” It kind of hurts to laugh pressed against Iwaizumi’s solid form, like this, so he pulls himself up into a sitting position, straddling his torso. As he rises, so does the bubbling happiness that’s come to a boil within him.

“It’s not that funny,” Iwaizumi says, sitting up. He slips his thumbs into Oikawa’s belt loops, settling him more comfortably in Iwaizumi’s lap. He gets pulled in just a little closer, and he falls all over again. _He loves me._

He brushes Iwaizumi’s spiky, uneven hair, which has swept over his head, aside, and presses a smiling kiss to the revealed skin. “You have a gift, you confess your love--”

Iwaizumi huffs out a dry laugh against his neck. It sends a smattering of tingles across his body, starting there, at ground zero. “You love me. You would have lost your mind,” he reckons, teasing the skin of his throat with his teeth.

“I would have freaked out!” laughs Oikawa, with amusement and pleasure. " _What about your fiancée?_ " he says in an exaggeration of his own voice.

Iwaizumi angles his head, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake until he pauses at the dip between Oikawa’s collarbones. " _You told me to break up with her._ "

Scandalized, Oikawa wraps his legs around Iwaizumi’s abdomen. He locks his ankles, hands in Iwaizumi’s short locks. " _did what?!_ "

Oikawa’s fingers work their way up from the base of Iwaizumi’s skull, threading them through his messy, spiky hair. Iwaizumi hums. “You’re ridiculous.” Instead of arguing against that, he just buries his face in the lingering scent of shampoo, and inhales into revitalized lungs.

“You love me,” muses Oikawa.

He says it like a mantra. He wasn’t swept away. Only one thing in his home kept him afloat, and that buoyancy rattles about in his stomach. He’s lighter than air. He’d escape into the ether without someone to hold him down, keep him tethered to this paradise.

“How long are you going to keep saying that?” Oikawa tilts his head upward to allow Iwaizumi easier access to the tender skin near the top of his throat.

“Until I believe it.”

Until the sky is blue, and the cicadas are chirping, and the frogs are hopping away from them faster than Oikawa ever thought they could.

(Well, perhaps not something so idyllic, but that’s the spirit of it -- kind and familiar, as much as their blackened souls can attain.)

Iwaizumi takes him out of his hair and brings them face to face. He cups the world in his hands, smoothing his thumb over the passionate skin. “What can I do to make you believe it?” he murmurs.

The white jacket bunches as Oikawa rubs his shoulders. He shrugs. “It feels like a dream.”

Heat. Desire. Want. The warmth of Iwaizumi’s mouth sends these all spiraling through Oikawa as he bites down on his lower lip, pulling it away slightly. “Oh?” he sighs. “Do you dream about me a lot?”

“Mm.” Oikawa presses a kiss to Iwaizumi’s eyelids. “Always.”

" _Always?_ " Iwaizumi’s hands should have felt cold, slipping under Oikawa’s t-shirt, but all it does is heighten the fervor that turns and excites, there, in his stomach. Fingerprints, like ink, trail smoothly over the folds of skin that sit on his hipbone. “Should I be flattered?”

“Absolutely.” For a heartbeat, Iwaizumi stalls. Then, he shirks off his jacket and allows it to flutter, like something so noncorporeal, to the couch. “You’re always painted in a positive light.”

Arms exposed, now, Iwaizumi returns. He wraps Oikawa in a tight embrace, clipped fingernails barely cutting into his back. Putting his face to the space between his neck and shoulder, his breath casts a damp shadow on the young stretch of skin. His pulse races. “Good to know.”

One hand finds itself at Oikawa’s front, gently pushing down on his abdomen. His mouth twitches unconsciously -- it _tickles_ \-- and the pair ease downward, the first settlers moving experimentally and slowly through the brand new environment.

Oikawa smiles up at him. He likes being beneath him, like this. Iwaizumi holds himself up over top the shirt that rides up to just below his pectorals, one hand on his abs. Oikawa squirms under the touch. “What do you dream about?” Iwaizumi asks.

“Nothing in particular.” Oikawa pulls Iwaizumi’s face down to him. “Being with you,” he breathes between kisses, “like this.”

Nothing in particular, he says, because he dreamed about _everything._ He dreamed about Iwaizumi holding him down with a great deal more force than he was presently, he dreamed about them playing together, even though Iwaizumi was a manager, he dreamed about talking to him about whatever and holding his hand and running his fingers through his hair in the middle of an open meadow, with no one but them, the blue summer sky, and the uncurling petals.

He dreamed about this very circumstance a lot, but this is so much _better_ than any fantasy his unconscious could have cooked up, because his unconscious could never get quite right what it’s like to have Iwaizumi drag a finger over the line running down his abdomen. 

(It’s incredible.)

Oikawa grabs at where the hair at the back of his neck turns to skin. “You telling me you love me,” he hums.

“I don’t think my dreams are such blatant wish fulfillment,” admits Iwaizumi as Oikawa’s hands reach under the collar of his shirt.

“Oh?” Well, one doesn’t choose their dreams -- it’s just what has been on their mind. And for Oikawa, more often than not, it’s Iwaizumi. “You’ve _never_ dreamed about me?” he murmurs into Iwaizumi’s ear.

“I’ve dreamed about you,” Iwaizumi says. “Nothing quite so interesting as yours.”

“Boring old Iwa-chan.” His breathing cuts out for a moment as Iwaizumi lifts his shirt higher. His heart thumps a little erratically, mere centimetres from Iwaizumi’s touch. “No steamy dreams about his secret love.”

Secret, that’s what it was -- nothing about how Oikawa felt was ever secret. At least, he never thought so. 

Nothing has to be secret anymore, right?

This is… okay, right?

" _Steamy?_ " The kisses have gotten a little sloppier, a little quicker. “You had _steamy_ dreams about me?”

“I told you,” Oikawa exhales, biting at the side of Iwaizumi’s mouth, “last week wasn’t the first time I’ve thought about fucking you.”

" _Oikawa._ " Iwaizumi presses him down further.

“I’m just being honest!” Oikawa tightens his legs around Iwaizumi’s waist. “You’re a hunk! Who doesn’t dream about fucking a hunk?”

Iwaizumi seizes the bottom of Oikawa’s shirt and pulls it up over his head. There’s nothing about the movement that’s fueled by desperation, Oikawa realizes, rather, Iwaizumi is taking his time with it. The sun is shining above (didn’t the weather say it’d be overcast all day?) and the lights are on and everything is _different_ this time. Everything down to the way the words he says taste in his mouth smack of something so distinctly _new._

“You can't possibly tell me you've never dreamed about fucking someone nice and pretty.” Oikawa shivers when Iwaizumi’s tongue touches his chest.

“I usually dreamed about fucking women.”

Oikawa is caught between grabbing his face so he can kiss those words straight out of him, and letting him simply continue on with whatever the Hell he’s doing, because damn him if it doesn’t feel good. He draws stars on Iwaizumi’s forehead. “Gross, Iwa-chan,” he complains. “You missed that perfect set-up I gave you.”

First of any, really.

“What perfect set-up?” Iwaizumi asks his heartbeat.

Oikawa purses his lip and sticks out his jaw. “ _Why would I dream about fucking someone pretty when I have you right here, baby?_ ” he croons in his best impression, which, admittedly, is not too high tier.

Iwaizumi’s chuckle makes Oikawa fidget against against the couch. “ _Baby?_ ”

“Shut up.” Oikawa presses two fingers to Iwaizumi’s lips. “I don’t know what your dirty talk sounds like.”

“Mm.” Iwaizumi reaches up and takes Oikawa’s wrist, lowering it to the cushion and holding it there, tight. “We should remedy that.”

" _That’s_ what I’m talking about.”

That avenue doesn’t last too long, actually; Iwaizumi holds Oikawa at his mercy there, on the suede, Oikawa unable to do anything but moan against the lips of the man he loves. There’s a loss of restrain; Iwaizumi’s patience for the chaste wanes and he gets a bit heavier, a bit rougher, with where he bites, where his tongue goes, where he puts his weight.

That’s a little more what Oikawa is used to -- tender doesn’t really seem to suit him, it seems. At least, it has never suited those whom he had sex with. But he was never in control, so who was he to set the pace?

This wasn’t the court.

Then Iwaizumi lets go; his hands travel to Oikawa’s ass, and he hoists him back into his lap. The jeans they’re both wearing make ease of access a little turbulent. _Well, if I knew_ this _was happening, I’d’ve been better off in a pair of too-big gym shorts, wouldn’t I?_ He grabs at the defined back muscles he’s spent the better part of his adolescence and adulthood admiring, ones that now exist under his palms, real and tantalizing. He almost wants to weep.

_Welp, no wife to go home to, now._

He marks bruises all the way down Iwaizumi’s throat; he has never heard a sound sweeter than the little _ah_ s he draws out of the man’s mouth, the mouth he makes his own with diligence and deliverance. He liberates himself in the middle of his living room, with the photos on the wall and the scuffs in the paint as his witnesses. 

He lets Iwaizumi undo him, eagerly and earnestly. For most of their friendship, it’s what he’s been doing, whether he was entirely aware of that fact notwithstanding. Each look, each touch, he loosened the string around another button, he dropped another stitch. Each kiss Iwaizumi presses to his parted mouth, his neck, his bare chest, he tears out another seam, and he seems to do it without a care for the vulnerability he forces by his very own hand.

There’s nothing else he wants, but the anxiety churns with the arousal in the pit of his stomach, at showing himself so honestly.

But Iwaizumi pulled him aboard, didn’t he? If he abandons ship, he drowns.

Oikawa shifts, he grates, he grinds, against Iwaizumi’s lap. Iwaizumi’s hands dance, like a master at work, from his back, to his front, to tracing along his jeans, making him whimper Iwaizumi’s name like a lost pup. It’s only fair that Oikawa teases him just as much, no?

Iwaizumi moans, and Oikawa kisses him silly.

They’re back to the beginning, back to a week ago. Same body, same crimson flush, same sweat.

But this time, the world can wait a couple minutes for them.

They’re not going to miss anything important.

The Ark meanders, it bobs and weaves through uncertain, splashing water, but there’s peace under the wooden roof, the raging downpour a vague memory in their homemade, quiet ideal.

Iwaizumi pushes the curls out off Oikawa’s forehead. “You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, his hand coming down to settle on the curve of his cheek.

“Flatterer,” purrs Oikawa.

They rock from side to side a bit; Iwaizumi sways. “As if you don’t like hearing it.”

Oikawa thinks it’s a little unfair that he’s the only one who’s shirtless. “You'll have to say it a few more times before I can make my verdict.”

_Call me beautiful until I can believe it every time you say it. I mean, I get it a lot, but from you, it means something._

“You’re unbelievable.”

 _You’re unbelievable._ Seriously, Iwaizumi, who breaks up with their betrothed of _four_ years, to be here with Oikawa, of all people? He’s crazy, Oikawa thinks, he’s crazy and Oikawa loves him. No matter how hard he tries to play the straight man, out of the two of them, he’s the most extraordinary -- by a _long shot._

Whatever his damage, whatever his reason (he’s in _love_ with Oikawa! _In love!_ ), he’s here. Oikawa gives him his everything; he’s not used to giving anything else. He’d kiss Iwaizumi until the blood drained from his body, until his brain ceased functioning, until they were the only two stars left twinkling in the universe.

A roaming hand reaches around his thigh, and a thumb passes over the sensitive fabric where his dick is. He lets out a high-pitched whine, drawing back in surprise. As soon as the sound leaves his lips, he can barely believe it came from there; he covers his mouth in embarrassment. Iwaizumi simpers.

“You like that?” he taunts.

Oikawa pushes the tips of fingers to the ends of Iwaizumi’s mouth. “Shut up.”

“No, I’m serious.” He moves Oikawa’s fingertips and kisses them, right where the joint is. “I want to make you feel good.”

Ah, when was the last time that Oikawa heard that?

The curve of his nose almost fits Iwaizumi’s forehead as he rests there, the words settling in him like sediment at the bottom of the sea. It’s all so _different,_ he wants to laugh. 

And he does.

Something so self-deprecating and flat falls out of him, like acid that sears his naked torso, and Iwaizumi’s hands still on his hips.

“You’re too nice to me,” he mumbles.

Iwaizumi’s expression falters. “Do you want me to be mean to you?”

Oikawa trails his nail across a collarbone he does not see. “ _Kinky,_ ” he chuckles. When Iwaizumi doesn’t move their faces together, or try to kiss him, he realizes that he’s awaiting further elaboration, and this acknowledgement comes as a sickening jolt. “No,” he says slowly. “I don’t deserve--”

“Stop it.”

Hands to Iwaizumi’s chest, Oikawa gently pushes himself away. He takes fistfuls of t-shirt fabric.

For endless moments, there is nothing.

Oikawa doesn’t like the _nothing,_ there isn’t supposed to be nothing. What marked these ventures with men on his couch, his bed, his misery, was anything but. He’s used to guys trying to cop a quick feel, or desperate, scrabbling fingers that leave streaks of red like well-worn trails across his back. He’s used to scrapes and scratches and bruises. He’s used to _rough,_ in voice, in action, in intention. 

Being used as a means to an end, another pretty face with the body to match, that’s what happened when he slept with strangers.

He thought he didn’t mind it -- after all, he liked rough just fine. That way, he could pretend he was being taken by the man with the dry hands and taut muscles and furrowed brow who holds him now so goddamn _gently_ that it’s driving him mad.

He’s used to being thrown off beds, and unrepressing tension and desire that suffocates them in the middle of the night, not whatever the Hell this is.

“I don’t know how to do this.”

Iwaizumi isn’t trying to hurt him.

He’s _used_ to finishing before his own satisfaction, climaxing when there’s nothing much for him to purge, but Iwaizumi builds, and builds...

 _This?_ "

_Being loved._

“Like _this,_ ” he sighs, touching Iwaizumi’s hands at his sides, “I don’t--” He trails off.

Iwaizumi waits. His eyes are all-encompassing. _Like the galaxy,_ Oikawa thinks. _There’s a whole galaxy inside there._

“Soft.” He struggles to get the words out -- they slouch, stuck in his throat like a dry bit of food. “I don’t know how to do… soft.”

Iwaizumi’s thumbs slip into the space between jean and skin, and his grip tightens. Oikawa watches this dutifully. “I don’t believe you.”

Oikawa drags his gaze to meet Iwaizumi’s again. His hands curl upward, and he fits his fingers easily into Oikawa’s, threading them with as much grace as a fine artisan winding a new piece of clothing. When they slot together, like this, Oikawa almost believes he can do _soft._

Almost.

Iwaizumi gently brings both his hands up to his lips, and the fine, not-quite-there peach fuzz above them grazes the knuckles of his fingers. Pin-pricks rush through Oikawa’s body, enough to make him go numb on impact. “You’re perfectly soft,” he murmurs.

A shiver runs down the entire length of Oikawa’s spine, neck to tailbone. “I don’t mean my skin, Iwa-chan,” he pouts.

“It’s part of it,” Iwaizumi continues. “You’re _soft._ ”

Oikawa’d like to be soft, if that’s what Iwaizumi wants out of him. For so long, he learned to twist and turn himself, wear a different persona whenever the occasion was called for. He changed men, he changed masks, rinse, and repeat. Splash the water over yourself and try again.

Iwaizumi was the only person whom he couldn’t wash himself of. The only person that wicked the water off of him, left it to pool and rise and _flood_ around him. Iwaizumi had seen every inch of him, metaphorically, and physically. Each and every flaw that tripped through his young, uncertain body, each aggrandizing insecurity and fear, every selfish thought he found travelling between neurons.

Every scar he obtained from slipping off of rocks or falling over tree roots, every scar sliced into his heart as the roots caught back up to him and wrapped around his heart, wanton hand outstretched toward the black-haired boy who would never let his own scars show, if any he ever had.

Iwaizumi was the one, the _only_ one, who never believed for a second in any persona; they knew each other far too well. He stared into him then as he stares into him now, seeing even what Oikawa himself could not.

He must have seen something amongst the imperfections, to bring him to where they were presently. Something soft. Something vulnerable. Something he didn’t have to wear. Something authentic to him.

He never was one to leave things unfinished.

“Your skin.” Iwaizumi’s hands slide down to his wrists, and with deft thumbs, he caresses the bottoms of his palms as he kisses ruddied knuckles. “Your hair.” His lips flatten curls to Oikawa’s forehead. “Your lips.”

They exchange looks. Iwaizumi presses into him, bestowing a languid kiss that they both linger in. There’s no air other than that which they share.

“You’re getting distracted,” Oikawa says softly.

(But really, this is better than any hook-up he’s had in the past five years.)

“You’re distracting.”

Iwaizumi’s palms go to Oikawa’s face, thumbs resting right at the tender, worn skin at the corners of his eyes. His fingertips run over his earlobes, which isn’t even a sensation Oikawa knew could bring pleasure, but Iwaizumi is teaching him there’s a lot of things he didn’t know. With nowhere for his own hands to go, his fall, brushing Iwaizumi’s sides before coming to his waist.

“How can you say you don’t know how to be soft, when it’s all I see when I look at you?”

Oikawa’s respiratory system malfunctions a little. The oxygen leaks out of his pores, and his pulmonary veins have just apparently chosen to stop working, because his heart stutters like a poor engine.

When his body restarts, it comes out full force. Suddenly, there’s blood _everywhere._ His face has gone impossibly warm; he feels like a grade-schooler confessed to under the dancing sakura petals for the first time.

 _When did Iwa-chan get so cool? And smooth?_ he wonders. Well, it’s not like he’s complaining. Not at all. “Is that an insult?” he stutters, cursing how wobbly he sounds.

“You know damn well it isn’t.” Iwaizumi’s fingers run themselves through Oikawa’s hair, pushing it all back.

Oikawa rocks toward him, compelled by the gesture. 

“I know you might not be used to it. I’m not exactly--” He cuts himself off with a short, nervous laugh. “I’m new to this.”

_You’re really good at it._

“You’re completely foreign territory to me.” Oikawa takes meticulous care of his appearance, and now his hair is all messed up. He can’t find it inside himself to care. His eyes flutter closed. “But we’ll figure it out together.”

What else is there to do in the new world, other than take your time? To adventure, to explore the new land in front of him? Learn the geography, each line, each bump, of the new map before him? 

Oikawa thinks he likes soft.

(Or, he can learn to.)

Taking it slow, he thinks, is okay, because there’s nothing to interrupt them anymore. No illicit affairs. No storms. Not anymore.

“But right now, I want you to tell me when you like something, and tell me when you don't.” Iwaizumi holds the back of his neck. “So I can learn.”

Oikawa’s hands wander up Iwaizumi’s shirt. His skin is hot, it’s always so hot.

“I’d like anything you’re willing to give me.”

Iwaizumi digs his nose into the space right next to Oikawa’s, mouths askew, breath licking the corner of his lips. “That’s not part of the deal.” His voice buzzes against his cheek.

 _God,_ does the inside of his mouth taste so damn good. He smacks of confidence, of bravado, of desire and of everything Oikawa has wanted.

Far better, and far sweeter, than some cheap alcohol.

...Ditching the jeans would aid the two of them greatly.

“I’m going to kiss you,” Iwaizumi gulps between needy kisses, “then, I’m going to bring you to that unnecessarily cushy bed of yours--”

“It’s comfortable--” Oikawa whines.

“-- _I’m going to bring you to that unnecessarily cushy bed of yours,_ " Iwaizumi growls, and all of Oikawa’s objections die on his tongue. “And then I’m going to fuck you.”

Sounds great to Oikawa.

“And along the way, you’re going to tell me what you like, and what you don’t like, and I’m going to be as soft as I damn well please.” Hands. There are hands everywhere; right when Oikawa thinks they’ve settled in one place, they glide to another. Iwaizumi bites where his top and bottom lip meet, and he lets out a very un-Oikawa-like squeak. " _Understood?_ "

Oikawa didn’t think he was really that _easy --_ maybe, just easy to those whom he was deliriously in love with.

“Okay,” he whispers thinly.

“Good.”

Solid hands grip his waist tightly. It takes a moment in his fuzzy mind for Oikawa to realize that Iwaizumi is shifting him, ever so slightly. 

The man guides him to the right and he’s left straddling one solid thigh, and he swings the two of them around, dropping one leg off the couch as he leans backward into the plush, Oikawa leering over him. Oikawa attempts to reorient himself, but when he does, Iwaizumi folds the leg he’s sitting on and--

_Ah!_

The pressure against the already stressed denim causes a moan to bubble up, one that he struggles to stifle. “ _Iwaizumi,_ ” he whines breathily, glaring down at the smiling culprit, who holds him flush to his knee. _Hot. It’s always so hot._

Liquid fervor rises inside of him, coating every cell in an indistinct warmth.

“Hm?” 

The son of a bitch.

“That wasn’t--” He hisses sharply. Iwaizumi presses his knee into his inner thigh once more, grinning all the while. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

Iwaizumi reaches for his shoulder blades, pulling him in closer. The tips of their noses touching, he murmurs, “the deal was to make you feel good.”

This time around, Oikawa can’t keep himself from whimpering. He becomes even hazier as the fervor builds, his mind only really being able to focus on the pressure on his dick, and Iwaizumi’s sultry words, roughened by his arousal, saying he’s going to fuck him.

No more waiting. No more desperation. No more cutting off before they’ve even begun.

Oikawa’s interest in foreplay wanes, with Iwaizumi so enticingly close. They’re not in a dream, even though it may feel that way, and Iwaizumi’s hands ground him.

It’s similar to how he feels on the court -- alert and indefinite, all at once, blood coursing through him, adrenaline in each and every vein.

“Ah,” Oikawa gasps. Some piteous part of him makes his eyes glisten with the starting of tears -- he doesn’t have the time to unpack why. “Iwa--”

“Yes?” He pushes up again, and smiles gently at the clipped moan he elicits.

“Don’t--”

“Don’t? Do you want me to stop?”

Oikawa swirls his tongue around Iwaizumi’s mouth, staring him dead in the eyes. They reflect the entire solar system. “ _Don’t stop._ ”

“Ah.” They breathe. “I see.”

Iwaizumi’s hands are _everywhere_ yet again _\--_ his nails and his fingertips and his arms, they reach around Oikawa’s torso. Any part of what he does could be considered as tasteless and as vain as the random guys he takes to bed, but where they differ is in the passion. Oikawa senses Iwaizumi’s essence in every single touch and grab, every bite mark he paints like a masterpiece across his skin, each drag of the tongue choking him with more pleasure than Takahashi ever did -- and Iwaizumi isn’t going to throw him onto the floor like a piece of trash, a fungible mistake.

Because Iwaizumi makes him feel the _opposite_ of fungible, declares him the only man in the world, or at least, the only one who matters.

 _You’re beautiful,_ it feels like he whispers each time he moans against his mouth. _I love you,_ he promises, pulling at his hair. Their movements are tangled, clumsy at times, but by God, does he know how to make a man feel loved.

No one else made him feel quite so important. 

No one tried to remind him he mattered.

(In fact, Oikawa doesn’t think that was even a thought in their minds.)

A quick fuck, and they were gone. Impermanent. Ethereal. 

Oikawa bites down hard on the skin stretching across Iwaizumi’s collarbone to keep himself from screaming out his name.

 _You matter,_ Iwaizumi’s kisses tell him, no matter how hard he sucks, how rough he is with his teeth, how he grabs Oikawa’s face, pulls him in, and makes him see stars. _You matter, you matter, you matter,_ say the bruises across his throat.

The desperation on the couch comes entirely in how strongly Oikawa wants to believe that.

His hips are forced down by Iwaizumi, who, again, pushes his knee up. Oikawa lets out a sharp wail, one he doesn’t attempt to suppress. It resounds in the ears of the walls, and Iwaizumi seizes control of his mouth before he has the time to whimper anymore.

_Love me. Fuck me. Tell me I matter._

_Please._

Fire coats his lungs. He can barely breathe.

He didn’t think he’d be spending his afternoon finally knowing what it felt like to have Iwaizumi inside him, but, well, there are worse things. There’s only so long he can take the teasing, not when he’s wanted this for so long.

“I’m glad I didn’t dream about you,” comments Iwaizumi.

Oikawa was in the middle of imagining how nice his first name would sound coming out of that mouth, how good of a time he could show Iwaizumi. “Mm-- what?”

“I'm glad I never had any dreams about you like this,” he says, taking Oikawa’s chin and tilting it downward to look straight at him. “You're so much better than anything I could dream up.”

" _Sap,_ " Oikawa jeers.

" _Gorgeous._ "

_Say it again. Say it a million times. Don’t say anything else, except maybe my name._

“You know, you’re not so bad yourself.” There’s a thin layer of sweat that’s begun to form on the both of them; Oikawa wicks some away with his thumb.

“Glad to hear.”

Iwaizumi heaves him off of his knee (Oikawa doesn’t think he’d be able to bear it much longer, so perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise), and hauls him onto his midsection. He squeaks at both the change in pressure and location.

“You’re strong.”

Hands in Oikawa’s back pockets, Iwaizumi kisses his shoulder. “Hm?”

“You picked me up like I was nothing,” Oikawa points out. He is, of course, too, talking about the events of a week prior, swept up off the couch like he was but the weight of a feather. He was a little too focused on other things (like the mouth and body he had been _planning_ to be dominated by), but now, he fully appreciates the way the muscles in his friend(?)’s arms twitch.

“You’re not that heavy,” Iwaizumi admonishes. Oikawa feels devastatingly safe in his arms.

“I’m a six-foot-tall professional athlete! I’m heavy,” Oikawa corrects him, biting the tongue in his mouth.

“I’ll pick you up whenever you want.”

A dangerous thought passes through Oikawa’s brain, concerning the strength of those hands and the width of his own neck. It’s barely a coherent image in his mind, but he’s cognizant of it, nonetheless. Hey, if he’s not going to drown…

“Oh, _absolutely._ ” Iwaizumi kisses him, and that fantasy is cut short -- for now, at least. But it left him feeling a little brazen, turning over what he could have Iwaizumi do to him, now that he had him here. “You should pick me up and fuck me against the wall.”

He’d be better at it than Takahashi. He was better at everything than anyone.

Oikawa’s hands claw down Iwaizumi’s face as he bucks his hips, pushing Iwaizumi deeper into the back of the couch. A fun little noise quirks out of his lips, and Oikawa relishes in the way it spills into his mouth, wondering how many sounds he can pull from his lover.

“Right now?” Iwaizumi inhales.

“Nah,” Oikawa exhales, “I like your plan.” Does he ever, oh boy, does he ever. “In the future, though, you should fuck me against a wall.” His hands roam to warm, well-defined abs under his unfairly tight shirt.

“I’ll do whatever you like,” heaves Iwaizumi.

Oikawa draws back, pressing the tip of his index finger to Iwaizumi’s teeth. He takes the short nail between them. “Whatever?” he murmurs, wondrous.

A precarious game you’re playing, Iwa-chan, thinks Oikawa ruefully, a precarious game indeed. A game that Oikawa has great interest in participating in, so long as this is a one person sport.

“I’ll do whatever you like as long as it’s within reason,” appends Iwaizumi, too little too late.

“No, no! You can’t take it back!” sings Oikawa as he squeezes Iwaizumi between his legs. “Whatever I want…” He chuckles darkly into hot breath. Immediately, anything running the gamut from “completely safe” to “decidedly not so” pops into mind. 

(Anything feels safe with Iwaizumi.)

“Hmmm, what an incredible offer.”

“I regret saying it.” Oikawa is really getting sick of these jeans. He stymies yet another moan as he wiggles and twists against Iwaizumi.

“I won’t make you regret it,” he promises. “Not yet, at least.”

“Alarming.”

Hands. Throat. He gets the picture.

The quiet encroaches on the two of them. In fact, it’s awfully quiet in the house for what is currently transpiring under the eyes of the walls. It’s calm, one could say, in the eye of the hurricane. For all the vortexes that swirl around the two of them, every stormy wind that has cleaved them apart, now they’ve found solace, here, on the Ark.

Just two lost souls, trying to make something out of themselves.

Oikawa misses when things were simple, but all and all, the complicated isn’t all bad.

Because he can say, do, and try so many different things that were never on his mind when he was but a wee lad catching frogs.

“I want you to take me to bed,” he decides. He’s ready. The world is ready.

They’ve both done their fair share of waiting.

“Yeah?” Iwaizumi’s hands stop moving. He holds Oikawa like he’d fade into mist should he loosen his grip even a little, and Oikawa understands. He understands so, so well. “Same way I did last time?”

Oikawa buries his head into Iwaizumi’s shoulder. " _Please._ "

His arms drop down lower, and he inches closer to the edge of the cushion, out of the crease Oikawa had driven him into. Oikawa wraps his arms around Iwaizumi’s neck, and, as they shift to a standing position, he clings with his legs while Iwaizumi sways and swings him about. Maybe the motion would make him a little nauseated, if he wasn’t so madly in love.

It’s weird. Oikawa knows it’s weird, how it seems like nothing else truly matters in the arms of his beloved. Everything else melts away underfoot. In some of his worse hook-ups, Oikawa had been thinking of strategies in his head, replaying failed serves, or in some cases, writing his goddamn mental grocery list.

Not with Iwaizumi.

He makes Oikawa feel like the most important man in the universe, but to him, too, Iwaizumi is the only person who matters at this very moment.

So many times, he had cursed himself for falling so foolishly for someone so impossible, but now, he kisses the possible. The drought, the storm, the flood, it barely exists in both of their minds, something blurry and not quite there. Something that, unlike them two, matters not.

It’s only them.

Oikawa smiles against his lips -- he can’t help it. He really can’t.

He is let down -- not tossed -- and he reluctantly eases out of Iwaizumi’s grasp. He lands in a bit of a crumple nonetheless, and _fuck,_ he can finally get the damn jeans off of his legs, but more importantly, off his dick. He unzips them and pushes them off; Iwaizumi helps finish the job and pitches them off to one side. A rush of exhilaration tears through him at break-neck speeds and the heat inside him, right near its boiling point, makes him want to explode. 

Iwaizumi takes his shirt off and flicks it away, flipping non-existent long hair as he does so. _Finally,_ Oikawa thinks selfishly, marvelling at the way the light dapples his curves and musculature (the lights in his bedroom are off; all that stares down is the smooth late afternoon sunlight from beyond the ecstatic glass of the window. 

Oikawa shoots out a low whistle, pulling himself to sit up, kicking his legs like an excited child. “You know, you should just never wear shirts,” he advises, heat leaking out of him and making the words warm. He’s only two metres away, give or take, but it feels like they’re oceans apart.

“That doesn't sound very practical.” Iwaizumi slicks back his hair.

“It’s practical for me,” reasons Oikawa, watching Iwaizumi undo his own jeans and pull them down. He swipes his tongue over his lips, suddenly rather parched. “I’d get to drool over you whenever I wanted.”

Wouldn’t that be grand? Nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed about, no feelings that threaten to eat him from the inside out, fester like an infection. He could scream _I love you_ to the world, and he wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.

Not of Iwaizumi, not of Eri, and not of himself.

“Everyone else would be able to see me shirtless.” He tugs his jeans off, past his feet, and kicks them to the side.

“You make an _excellent_ point.” Oikawa tips his head from shoulder to shoulder impatiently. “I’m the only one who gets to see you like this.”

Iwaizumi rotates his wrist. “You, and everyone else in the locker room.”

Nope. Oikawa doesn’t even want to touch the fact that the professional athletes he played against in high school have seen the love of his life shirtless. Delete. Erase. “Fuck ‘em,” he declares. His hands tremble, tripping on his running pulse, as he scrabbles to the edge of the bed and sits back on his haunches. “You’re mine now. My eyes only.” He takes in the view. “My hands only.”

His breath catches, but his words come out as assured and as confident as one could hope. “Come here.”

Iwaizumi approaches, and Oikawa plants his hands on his hands on his now bare torso. Chiseled like a statue of the Gods themselves, Oikawa thinks (and greatly appreciates), as he fingers the waistband of his boxers and kisses down the pronounced line of his abdomen. His skin is tan, smooth, _always so hot_ beneath his needy touch; he whines against the immaculate creases, presently, as Iwaizumi runs his hair back, fingers knotted in the locks.

It hurts, but it’s _so_ far from unpleasurable.

“You said you wanted me to tell you what to do?” Oikawa’s top teeth still at the waistband.

“Please,” gulps Iwaizumi.

“Touch me.” Flesh digs under Oikawa’s fingernails. He draws in waves. “Get on top of me. _Please._ ”

Iwaizumi yanks his his chin up and Oikawa rises up on his knees, leaning forward, and catching himself on the band of that pesky, pesky pair of underwear, which he flits his thumbs under. His breathing thins with the angle he tilts his head up at, but there’s little time to care about the flow of oxygen to his lungs when Iwaizumi takes control of his mouth.

There’s not much style to it, honestly; but what it lacks in brilliance it makes up for in passion. They’re hot, wet, unapologetically _messy --_ a line of spit bridges their panting mouths as they pull away, gasping.

Oikawa thinks he hears him murmur _Tooru,_ and it reduces him to a similar puddle that the foreplay does.

God, he was far gone, wasn’t he?

His chest pulls and heaves as the length of one kiss almost makes tears spring to his eyes. Feebly, he claws at Iwaizumi’s boxers, and he draws back, ragged breaths chasing their way into his throat. Smiling knowingly, Iwaizumi holds his chin in the crook of his finger, one-handedly removing the devil’s barrier with grace.

Eerily similar, Oikawa remembers, to their previous debauchery.

He blows out a second, suggestive whistle. Twice, now, he’s seen Iwaizumi’s dick -- in recent memory, of course -- and it’s a lot more impressive when his room _isn’t_ cast in midnight shadows.

Iwaizumi chuckles lightly, and runs his hands down Oikawa’s sides. With fistfuls of egregious bright pink fabric (hey, it’s not Oikawa’s fault he didn’t know he was getting fucked today, and he likes to make a strong impression, either way), he pulls the boxers down Oikawa’s legs at a pace that nearly drives Oikawa to insanity.

Slow. Delicate. Deliberate. It’s making him _mad._

He wraps his arms around Iwaizumi and pulls him down vigourously. The two fall into a heap against the white duvet and plush mattress (Oikawa doesn’t know _why_ Iwaizumi found the need to deride it -- more springs, more fun, no?), a mess of limbs and sweat and curls of chocolate-brown hair. The blanket is so soft but Iwaizumi, Iwaizumi is hard and solid and _present,_ against him.

He’s so _beautiful._ As vulnerable as he could ever be, naked, fresh out of nothing and teetering on the edge of everything, crimson flush so carefully brushed across his gorgeous face, on top of Oikawa.

Maybe it’s all okay now.

Maybe Iwaizumi can teach him what it’s like to feel so loved.

His breathing speeds up, coming out in quick, uneven pants, elicited as Iwaizumi’s slicked mouth travels the length of his torso. From his gasping throat, to his heaving chest, to the abdomen beneath which teems a sea of unmitigated arousal, warmth, and anticipation. He could nearly bubble over right now.

His heartbeat is everywhere. He feels so _alive._

“ _Hajime,_ ” he wails, again and again.

Iwaizumi spreads a hand over his mouth; he sinks his teeth into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, whimpering.

He locks his legs around Iwaizumi’s hips, scratching at his jaw. Roughly, he takes hold of the skin there, forcing Iwaizumi’s face to his, staring so far and so hopefully into his dark, dark eyes. “Hey,” he rasps, “any fiancées to run home to?”

Surprise lights a gaze otherwise marred with unrepressed lust. _Remember from which we came._ “Nope,” he replies shortly. “You’re sober?”

Oikawa steals a kiss -- the only thing he’s drunk on is the intensity that spills out of him. “Sober enough.”

Iwaizumi grinds against him. A cry bursts from his mouth. “Enough?”

He reaches for Iwaizumi’s hips, taking ahold of his destiny in the only way he knows how to, right now. Instead of pulling at skin, he pulls at his desire, his passion, his past, his future.

_He loves me, he loves me not._

“I’m sober,” he corrects with a shaky breath. “Fuck me, Iwa-chan.”

The Ark finally boards.

Welcome to the new world, Noah.

There’s so much for you to learn.

-

“Oikawa?”

It’s darker now. Willowy evening sunlight falls in wavering bars across them, and the breeze hums pleasantly from where they can’t hear it. Oikawa is impossibly warm, tucked into Iwaizumi’s protective form that shields him from anything and all things.

Their breathing desyncs, and then syncs again. They become one, under the billowing blanket, untouched by the world’s horrors.

Well, perhaps that’s not quite right; both of them carried with them the injustice of life. Oikawa bore it on his back just as Iwaizumi shouted it to the world revolving. The two have both been scarred, scars that were borne when their lives ceased to be about catching frogs and tumbling through the undergrowth. Scars that they once hid, but learned to wear with quiet, and loud, pride.

Oikawa can’t possibly hide his own as he breathes against Iwaizumi.

It’s just that, here, in the half-light, things soften. The very air around them seems to glow gently, winking with a pale, subtle effervescence. Inside this room, inside this paradise, it’s nothing short of beautiful. Gentle. Lovely.

“Hm?” Oikawa murmurs. He turns over, where Iwaizumi is waiting, and puts his face to his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” His voice is a little scratchy, but that’s alright.

_Better than ever._

“‘Course,” Oikawa mumbles in response. He lays the back of his hand against Iwaizumi’s chest. “I’m just cuddly post-coitus.”

Iwaizumi makes a non-agreeable noise that resonates through Oikawa’s entire skeleton. “Never call it coitus again,” he grumbles.

Oikawa gazes at his -- gorgeous -- expression. “It’s a valid term--”

“It’s awful,” objects Iwaizumi, pouting. “It’s the least sexy way of saying sex.”

" _Fornication._ "

“Coitus is still worse.”

Oikawa giggles softly at the bizarre hang-up. Coitus, fornication, whatever. He finally got whatever Iwaizumi wanted to call it, and his body and mind are, momentarily, at peace. “I’m sure there are other terrible ways of referring to sex.” Distantly, he remembers a similar heated debate between Hanamaki and Matsukawa back in their old team group chat. “I’ll Google it.”

“Please don’t Google it.” Iwaizumi ruffles his hair with one hand. 

“I’m going to.”

Everything inhales.

Oikawa sheds a bit of the blanket and props himself up on one elbow that presses into a pillow. He rests a cheek on his bare shoulder, and reaches out to Iwaizumi. Barely feeling like he should touch such a masterpiece, he ghosts his fingers up a well-defined arm, a neck painted with hues of violets and blues, and an angular, petulant face.

Oh, is he in love, and oh, how is is loved in return.

To Hell with the incessant ache that has followed him like a phantom of all his past mistakes, he’s found himself a home in the vulnerability lying across from him. Iwaizumi leans into the touch of his careful palm, and he smooths a thumb over the skin, there.

He’s sweaty, with mussed-up hair, tired eyes, and a ruddied flush that extends past his cheeks and goes to his ears, and spirals down even to his fingertips and his toes. He’s the most perfect, picturesque man that Oikawa has ever had the luck to lay his eyes upon.

“You’re so _pretty._ ” Iwaizumi steals the words he was just about to say himself.

“I’m sweaty and gross,” complains Oikawa.

“Yeah,” concedes Iwaizumi, and Oikawa wrinkles his nose. “But I’m responsible for it. It’s a good feeling.”

It’s nice calling someone their name, and having that favour returned.

“Pervert,” teases Oikawa.

With some effort, he gets a pillow smooshed in his face. He lets out a squeak of surprise, glaring at Iwaizumi as it drops to the mattress. He chuckles shortly. “Seriously,” he goes on, “you look good.” He gives a sheepish smile. “I kind of want to go again.”

“You’re exhausting,” Oikawa replies, giddy at the glimpse into his future. “I’m going to take nap.” He frumps down and the bedsprings give.

He closes his eyes, and feels fingers lace themselves in loose curls, so tenderly it was like they had never touched him at all. “Alright,” says Iwaizumi from beyond his eyelids. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

They flicker.

“You will?”

Iwaizumi’s thumb comes to settle, kindly, where his cheekbone curves. “Of course,” he cements, as if it were obvious. _Of course I’d be here. Of course I’d never leave you. Of course I’ll stay. Of course I love--_ “Did you think I was going to leave?”

Oikawa crawls into his chest, and Iwaizumi’s chin sits at the top of his head. He doesn’t know if he can look at him again, like this -- it’s all so much, and he is but a mortal. There’s only so much he can take all at once before he bursts.

“I still think you’re going to leave.”

Iwaizumi slings an arm over him, pulling him in close. For a heartbeat, a moment in the ever moving universe, nothing can hurt him, not now and not ever. “I’m not,” he whispers.

“Okay.”

No one ever stayed. Oikawa didn’t blame them; they were hook-ups, after all, and it would be a little odd to sleep over and have a cheery breakfast with someone whose dick you knew better than their name. But after each person, Oikawa took to his bed on his lonesome, he slept and lived and ate by himself. And that was alright; he doesn’t think he’s codependent, after all, but it caught up.

It all caught up.

It caught up because none of them were Iwaizumi.

_Ethereal. Impermanent._

“I’m _serious,_ ” Iwaizumi continues. He says it with such conviction -- Oikawa desperately wants to believe him. “I’m not going to leave.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Oikawa relents.

“Oikawa.”

“Call me Tooru in bed.”

Iwaizumi sketches on his back with one finger -- lines, hearts, flowers. The kanji for his first name. “Tooru,” he appends. “I’m not going to leave you,” he promises.

“You left before,” points out Oikawa.

“You told me to leave,” Iwaizumi says, just as truthfully.

_I didn’t want to. There was nothing I wanted less._

“I shouldn’t have,” he admits, gritting his teeth. “I should have made you stay.”

“It worked out, didn’t it?” asks Iwaizumi. He starts to guide Oikawa upward and he shimmies back up to eye level; the two find their heads resting on the same pillow, faces mere centimetres apart -- Oikawa to Iwaizumi, auburn to hazel, hamartia to anagnorisis, and loved to lover. Iwaizumi strokes his face. “I came back.”

“I didn’t think you would.” Bewilderment lilts in Iwaizumi’s eyes.

“Really?”

“Really,” Oikawa confirms. He smiles bitterly. “I thought I'd get invited to your bachelor party, we'd fuck in a strip club the night before you got married, then I'd be fated to only speak to you through annoying matching-outfit holiday cards that I get twice a year.” As he tells this tale, he plays with one hand, gesturing fantastically.

Iwaizumi glances down at the bed where they’ve just made love.

( _Made love --_ now that’s a cringey phrase for it, Iwa-chan. He prefers to say _where they’ve just promised._ )

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers hollowly. He stares at Oikawa.

“Don’t be.” Oikawa pats his shoulder. “I never told you.”

Iwaizumi takes Oikawa’s wrist, and, instead of moving his hand anywhere, just holds it. And holds it. And holds it, in the dusky browns and in the sunlit yellows.

“I should have known,” he curses.

Well, it’s always been this way, hasn’t it? They’ve always been together. From partners in mischief to partners on the court, to partners in crime to partners in life to partners in what seems to be love. What other conclusion could they have come to?

How else was this arc supposed to end?

(This ending is satisfying, Oikawa thinks.)

“I wouldn’t blame you.”

No one said his name for a reason. No one stayed for a reason.

“Hm?” Iwaizumi eyes him.

“If you left.” Oikawa lets his eyelids flutter shut, presently, as he airs this one out. “If you changed your mind.”

Iwaizumi squeezes the wrist in his grasp. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

Oikawa sucks back the reproach that reaches up onto his tongue. “You don’t _know_ that.”

No one truly knows anything.

No one knows when everything you worked for is going to be cut short. No one knows when the new rising star in your school is going to grow too big for his body and outshine them all, forcing those whom he pushed aside to destroy themselves in a supernova to try and be seen, even if it kills them. No one knows when your best friend, the man working himself up to your everything, is going to start dating someone new.

No one knows they’re going to leave until it all falls apart.

Until it becomes the only option.

“I do,” Iwaizumi tells him, and his grip on Oikawa’s wrist is firm. His breathing falls out of pace.

“You made the decision in a week,” Oikawa reminds him, saying it in a rush to hide the rising shame. “You were engaged to--” _he wishes not to bring her name into Heaven_ “-- _her,_ for almost a year, not including the time you spent courting,” he bites.

Iwaizumi quirks an eyebrow -- at least, that’s what it sounds like, with the incredulity that slips into his voice. “Courting?” he wonders.

“Dating,” Oikawa sighs. “Whatever.”

Nothing else comes out of Iwaizumi’s mouth. Not even an utterance. Oikawa feels suddenly infinitesimal, dwarfed by the bed and the blanket and the man he adores.

“You don’t know you won’t regret it.” He sounds so vastly small.

“Oikawa.”

“Tooru.”

“ _Tooru._ ” Iwaizumi hangs on it; he accentuates each syllable, he speaks low and diffidently. There’s a quiet rustling, Oikawa hears without his sight, and then his hand is pressed to his cheek, abetted by Iwaizumi’s own touch. It’s warm, cupped against his own sweat. Slowly, he allows his eyes to open. “I won’t regret it.”

Iwaizumi coaxes him to his face, where he presses a soft, lingering kiss into his mouth. There’s nothing hot, or fast, or coitus-inducing about this one; there is no means to an end. He takes his own wonderful time against Oikawa’s lips, and then blinks.

“The only thing I could ever possibly regret,” he begins, with a voice as smooth as his sleek skin, “is that I let you think I didn’t love you.”

It surprises Oikawa a little, the next phrase out of his mouth. “I knew you loved me,” he responds simply.

“What?”

Somewhere between scraping their knees on dusty back roads learning how to spike, and lying on each other’s beds tearing their hair out over some ludicrous _solve for x for all values of whatever the Hell_ question, or sitting in the change room as they chatted over nothing in particular, Oikawa realized that. There was nothing in the sport they played, nor the bond they shared, of compatriots, future enemies, future lovers, that was devoid of love.

It snaked its way into every echelon. It became what they stood for. It became what they stood _on._

Iwaizumi set his heart straight in their third year of middle school, and he never let himself forget that.

There was too much, between them, for any of it not to have at least a little love.

“I didn't--” Oikawa stumbles over the weight of his emotions. “I didn't think you loved me like this, but I knew you loved me. That was enough.”

“It wasn’t enough,” Iwaizumi quickly supplements. He runs a thumb over Oikawa’s eyes; it’s a sensation that even his lashes catch. “I love you in all the ways.”

Whoever came up with the analogy of plucking petals, anyway? Whomever was the affected, in that relationship, should have been treated better. All Iwaizumi makes Oikawa want to do is grow, is bloom, is embody every single beautiful colour that he sees exploding out of Iwaizumi like a firework. To stand tall, and proud, and happy to be alive.

To live. To _thrive._

To have someone water you when it’s dry. To have someone move you to higher ground when it floods.

It couldn’t be anyone but Iwaizumi, who filled that role.

Oikawa wants to cry.

“You're a big sap, Iwa-chan.” _Hajime. Hajime Hajime Hajime._ “I feel like I'm in one of those American romance movies where no one communicates.”

Iwaizumi smiles. “We’re not the most stellar communicators,” he says with a half-hearted snicker.

“We’ll figure it out.”

If he’s to be loved, there is no other option.

Fingers. Again. In Oikawa’s hair. “We’ll figure it out.”

He pulls Oikawa into him once more, but this time, their lips do not meet. The light shifts and stilts on locks of brown as Iwaizumi tentatively brushes them out of the way, exposing Oikawa’s forehead. Breath -- warm and inviting -- plays on the admittedly not-to-sensitive skin that’s there, and Iwaizumi kisses him, so impossibly gently.

Except now, he doesn’t feel impatient, or worried, or like someone is going to bust down the door on some affair.

_We’re okay._

“I promise,” Iwaizumi goes on. Each word is a brick in the home the two are building. “I’ll never regret choosing you.”

_Thank you._

“I don’t know,” Oikawa japes, “I think I could make you regret it.”

“Oh?” asks Iwaizumi, intrigued.

“Absolutely.” Oikawa beams up at him. “I’ll call you constantly.”

The combing fingers, it’s quickly becoming a weakness he didn’t know he had. “As if you didn’t do that before.”

“I’ll torment your family,” he ups the ante.

“Again,” chuckles Iwaizumi, “not unfamiliar territory.”

Maybe now that they’ve arrived here, the worst of it is over. They’ve threaded the needle, they’ve walked over the hot coals. What’s left, perchance, is celebration. Oikawa thinks he can do a little celebration -- God knows they both deserve it.

“I’ll leave my socks everywhere.”

“Your _socks?_ ”

“I don’t like them all the time.” It hurts a little, weirdly, smiling like this. “I just--” he flicks his wrist theatrically, smirking nonetheless. “I take ‘em off and leave them wherever I took them off.” He uses his dramatic hand to wiggle his fingers, as if he were performing a grand magic trick. “My apartment is a treasure trove of socks.”

“I think I could handle that.” _Those are fightin’ words, Hajime._

“You’ll hate me,” Oikawa reckons, shyly glancing at Iwaizumi.

“Probably.”

Oikawa never, _ever,_ thought he would be thankful with his own doubt.

“You’ll stop loving me.” _Correct me correct me correct me--_

Iwaizumi smiles, teeth and shining eyes, and Oikawa knows he won the lottery when it came to childhood best friends, and adulthood lovers. “I’ve loved you for too long to stop now.”

Oikawa wonders if he lets Iwaizumi feel as loved as the vice versa.

He hopes.

With everything in him, he hopes.

“Mhm. Okay.”

-

It is not the sunlight, nor the tail-end of some ecstatic dream, which rouses Oikawa out of his rest. Instead, he awakes at his own pace (something which had become an increasing irregularity) and the sleep eases out of his muscles as he blinks open his eyes and twists about in place.

His skin meets another person’s.

Though it was not that which drew him from sleep, the sun, presently, still dawns on the body of Iwaizumi all the same, just as Oikawa’s eyes take him in. His memories don’t come to him in an overwhelming, paralyzing realization, they fade to recognition in his groggy mind, leaving him looking at the man in front of him, filled to the brim with emotions, both light and dark, negative and positive, that swell to his breaking point.

The light sits on Iwaizumi, quaintly and gorgeously, in a manner that paints his dark hair a pale, but brilliant gentle gold colour. It softens the hard edges and angular lines of his usually pulled-taut face, and all Oikawa is able to do, still a little fuzzy, is stare into that face. Admire the way he breathes (he still snores, the quietest bit, at odd intervals -- he has since they were children, and he still hotly objects to the fact that he does), the pronounced muscles of his neck and arms, visible above the comforter (he’s always taken care of his body, worked out carefully, and it shows even if he isn’t a professional athlete like a good deal of their cohort), and the now calm expression on his face (Oikawa simply loves the way he looked, looks, and will come to look).

He desires him, perhaps selfishly, perhaps not, after all, can it truly be selfish when Iwaizumi had offered, promised, given himself?

Both of them were selfish, greedy people, neither without sin, dirtied by a passion which they could not so easily work out with water, one which would stain Oikawa until the day he stole his last breath, and even beyond that. He knows that.

Even so.

Iwaizumi is here, now; he had made that choice, he had slept in the bed he once vehemently denied, and rests comfortably, skin and hair washed like the sand on the brink of a lake -- just as fine, and just as fleeting. Oikawa resists the urge to reach out and hold him tightly, lest he blows away into the blessed breeze, back home to his fiancée. Well, his ex-fiancée, he recalls.

Certainly, that must mean that, in all the tumult, in all the confusion and pain and drunken nights, that he desires him, too?

(Perhaps selfishly, perhaps not?)

It’s about all he can manage to raise a hand to the curve of Iwaizumi’s cheek, appreciate what he has with him, what he has _wanted_ for days and months and years, all of which consolidates into a feeling so great he can do nothing to voice it. All he does is stroke Iwaizumi’s face.

To Hell with the hiraeth; his home is the beating heart and the breathing soul before him.

_Finally._

Below his touch, the facial muscles twitch. “Oikawa?” murmurs he who awakens, eyelids fluttering open and focusing on Oikawa’s expression, touched by surprise.

“We’re still in bed,” Oikawa murmurs back to him, smiling lightly, hand sliding to cup his chin and place the tip of his thumb on his bottom lip. “Call me Tooru.”

"Tooru," Iwaizumi corrects himself -- hopefully for the last time. The young sunlight bleeds into his dark, all-knowing eyes, impossibly pretty this early in the day. "Good morning."

_Good morning._

And it is.

**Author's Note:**

> vocab of the day:  
> vasovagal syncope: the sudden fainting response to overwhelming stimuli (such as me, when i get vaccinated. get your flu shots, kids)  
> hamartia: the fatal flaw  
> anagnorisis: the moment the tragic hero realizes the web of fate they've become entangled in, such as when the soldier tells macbeth that birnam wood is coming to dunsinane  
> a/n from o_a: hello and welcome to the second iteration of overwhelmingly_awesome putting oikawa through the wringer, because by giving him crippling insecurity that can be combatted by love and affection she can live vicariously through her interpretations of the characters. she's not quite done with this universe, and she hasn't quite achieved her horny quota for the month, so if you'd like more of this, with less fantastic prose (<3) and more horny dialogue, by all means leave your best ideas in the comments and she'll see what she can do. or, hey, maybe leave some ideas for non-horny content. she'll see where the wind takes her.  
> a/n from me: at what point did you realize that i'm asexual during this? anyway, sorry for lack of hardcore smut, i'm not that comfortable writing straight up bangin nor do i think i'd be that good at it. i enjoy the foreplay, nonetheless. ALSO THE COITUS CONVO IS JUST O_A BULLYING ME BC I THINK IT'S THE WORST WORD... additionally, oikawa's strip club comment is literally just option a. and again, so much bullshit symbolism? the biblical stuff was unintentional last time until i caught on and made it a theme, meanwhile for this, i went ALL IN. i have never read the bible. my understanding of noah's ark comes solely from the gofer project in ndrv3 and the zoo race (caddicarus gang rise up). and also kageyama symbolism. he's here because... i love him. speakin a' which, i'm working on another fic for the btcu, and it is just as sappy and full of pontificating about how in love kghn are as the others. nonetheless i hope you all enjoyed it <3


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